FROM KNOWLEDGE CATHEDRALS TO NETWORKED CO-CREATION: PUBLIC LIBRARIES, TRUST AND THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

Since the mid-nineteenth century, public libraries have been trusted sites of information. They have retained this public trust even as the networked society and digital technologies have profoundly changed the status and function of information in social and economic life. Information super-abundance, ‘platform capitalism’ and the rise of ‘big data’ have made information a currency within increasingly intersecting processes of commercial exchange, governance, surveillance and self-expression. Libraries are not on the sidelines of this shift. As media centres and information managers, they have supported users to navigate how information is distributed and accessed. They are also actively shaping how information is put-to-use, reconfiguring their service delivery around user-centred models emphasising participation and co-creation, user experience, pleasure, innovation, and peer-to-peer learning. This paper explores the tensions at the heart of the library’s continued status as a site of trusted information. Using a theoretically contextualized ethnographic methodology, the paper discusses how libraries perform as infrastructures of trust in the knowledge economy. Part one contextualises the library’s altered relation to information within its physical transformation as an institution. Part two draws upon interviews with Australian library professionals to drill down into the range of ways libraries perform informational trust at a time of systemic mistrust. Our findings reveal that many of these institutional performances of trust are non-equivalent, suggesting that we need to develop new thinking around the trust infrastructures we need in an information-abundant, entrepreneurialist culture.

Findings from 2017 on Health Information Management

Objective: To summarize the recent literature and research and present a selection of the best papers published in 2017 in the field of Health Information Management (HIM) and Health Informatics. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was performed by the two HIM section editors of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Yearbook with the help of a medical librarian. We searched bibliographic databases for HIM-related papers using both MeSH descriptors and keywords in titles and abstracts. A shortlist of 15 candidate best papers was first selected by section editors before being peer-reviewed by independent external reviewers. Results: Health Information Exchange was a major theme within candidate best papers. The four papers ultimately selected as ‘Best Papers’ represent themes that include health information exchange, governance and policy issues, results of health information exchange, and methods of integrating information from multiple sources. Other articles within the candidate best papers include these themes as well as those focusing on authentication and de-identification and usability of information systems. Conclusions: The papers discussed in the HIM section of IMIA Yearbook reflect the overall theme of the 2018 edition of the Yearbook, i.e., the tension between privacy and access to information. While most of the papers focused on health information exchange, which reflects the “access” side of the equation, most of the others addressed privacy issues. This synopsis discusses these key issues at the intersection of HIM and informatics.

Afterword: The Exchange Order

The Afterword illustrates the operation of the exchange order by analogy to Braudel’s division of history into three frames and considers how this order might best be studied. Markets, tort, and criminal liability each operate at three levels of depth: a surface level where individual transactions are carried out and change is rapid, a middle level where the forces that determine costs and prices and the patterns of exchange interact and change is slower but discernible, and a deepest level that represents the fundamental commitment of the system to the social function of exchange governance, which changes very slowly, if at all. Nothing in any of these systems is ever in equilibrium, and the optimizing methods of Pigovian economics are not as useful in understanding how they work and change as are the historical, comparative methods of evolutionary biology.

Corporate governance disclosures in the New Zealand agricultural companies

Livestock, agriculture, and horticulture products are essential in the New Zealand economic sustainable development. Consequently performance and governance of active companies in these areas of business are constantly monitored by the public through legislators, stock market, government agencies, and media. Practically corporate governance disclosures are providing essential information for such monitoring and analysis. This paper intention includes critically evaluate corporate governance disclosures of agriculture companies. Implementation of the content analysis methodology enables this research project to present analysis of the level of compliance with the 2004 Corporate Governance Principles and Guidelines that put forwarded by the New Zealand Stock Exchange (governance related disclosure and their non-listed counterpart as expected providing even less disclosure in this area. The financial and governance reports of these companies are suffering from deficient transparency in the area of corporate governance.

Incorporating exchange governance in service-dominant logic

An area that receives limited attention in service-dominant (SD) logic is exchange governance. Exchange governance provisions can determine how benefits and costs are created and distributed, hence their importance. Much of the rationale for this oversight arises due to the emphasis on “value” in SD logic. With this as a starting point, this commentary article offers three sets of suggestions to integrate exchange governance into SD logic research. First, the subjective, socially embedded nature of value necessitates a greater reliance on norms-based governance. Under SD logic, there is a need to govern for a wider variety of idiosyncratic interactions throughout a service ecosystem. This has a bearing on monitoring and control activities. Second, SD logic is virtually silent on resource ownership. Understanding the property rights associated with value-creating resources is likely to determine who creates and appropriates value. Third, value-in-use suggests that value does not occur at the point of exchange exclusively. Given this, there is a need to consider value at the point of exchange as well as during the course of usage. The commentary concludes with a brief research agenda.

Συλλογικές διαπραγματεύσεις και κοινωνικός διάλογος στη Γαλλία: σύγχρονες εξελίξεις, νέα ζητήματα

Recently, changes in the processes of social bargaining and social dialogue, such as the decentralization of bargaining, the emergence of new issues and actors, challenge the approaches undertaken thus far for their study. Current analysis focus on the processes of decision making and the methods of state operation using the most recent approaches in political science. Notions such as “political exchange”, “governance” and “cognitive action framework” are being used more frequently than ever as analytical tools for industrial relations research. The paper examines two examples of these new trends; working time which constitutes an important issue within the French bargaining agenda and territorial social dialogue, where public actors are also involved, though indirectly.

Procuring complex performance: implications for exchange governance complexity

Purpose – While previous studies explored the argument that allies the notion of complexity to the complex product-service offerings being procured, this paper aims to explore whether there is a corollary with exchange governance complexity. More specifically, the paper analyzes the relationship between systemic complexity and complexity of contractual and relational exchange governance in procuring complex performance (PCP) arrangements. Design/methodology/approach – A multiple, longitudinal case study method is used to examine the relationship between systemic complexity and exchange governance complexity. The study deploys rich data sets by combining government and company reports with 43 semi-structured interviews. Findings – Preliminary conclusions suggest that as a response to increasing systemic complexity, organizations respond with increasing contractual governance complexity. However, better performing PCP arrangements illustrate that the use of simplified contractual governance in form of working agreements in combination with relational governance such as inter-personal relationships may be more effective to counteract complexity. Practical implications – The paper questions whether organizations should respond with increasing exchange governance complexity to counteract systemic complexity. Managers must consider the manageability and enforceability of complex contracts in combination with the formation of inter-personal relationships and simplified working agreements. Originality/value – This study adds to the limited empirical understanding on the nature of long-term public-private interactions in PCP. It also contributes through a rare focus on the relationship between systemic complexity and exchange governance complexity in PCP arrangements.

The Evolution of Inter-Firm Collaboration in Supply Chain Networks

To date, no published study has measured the evolution of supply chain structure and relationships in response to changing product-market development requirements. This research draws upon production literature and exchange governance theory to simulate the interaction of supply and demand environment factors on the growth and development of supply chain relationships. Experiments were conducted to study the effects of different rates of product change, different demand environments, and different economies of scale on the level of integration between firms at different levels in the supply chain. It synthesizes the interrelationships of the simulation variables in order to extend TCA theory into a dynamic network environment by using the CAS paradigm. The study reveals definite patterns of evolution under conditions of differing product-market conditions, it confirms the importance of the balancing transaction and production costs, and it highlights the asymmetries of transactional and production costs in relationships.